


Making Fire

by Sylphidine_Gallimaufry



Category: Original Work
Genre: Don't Like Don't Read, Horror, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Psychological Horror, domestic gothic, there's an ifrit on the loose, who said life was fair?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-16 23:13:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21044372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sylphidine_Gallimaufry/pseuds/Sylphidine_Gallimaufry
Summary: It only takes a second, literally.





	Making Fire

##  ** _1991_ **

“Betelgeuse!”  
  
The television blares, her resentment builds and burns. She’s just worked four twelve-hour days on the ward, back to back. Just for once, would it really destroy him to take her out to eat? Or even to pick up McDonald’s for her?  
  
She hears a sound effect of duct tape ripping. She feels something in her soul rip.  
  
“Betelgeuse!”  
  
There is a clang of metal from the movie soundtrack playing out without her, intruding from the living room where *she* would give a million dollars to be right now, slouched in the recliner with *her* tired feet blissfully propped up. What had *he* done all day, apart from sleeping and moping?   
  
She answers the hateful television with a clang of her own, dragging pots out of their untidy nesting places in the lower cabinets. She fills up the big spaghetti pot with water and turns the stove’s heating element up to HIGH.  
  
He never took her to the movies anymore, and she had really wanted to see this film when it came out in the theaters. The unfairness of having it so near now that it had made it to television, and yet being unable to enjoy it, bubbles up in her with a caustic hiss.  
  
She takes a mere second to look into the living room, to possibly catch one scene, and notices that he isn’t even watching; he’s dozed off, but lightly enough that she’d wake him if she shut off the TV.  
  
She angrily throws a handful of salt into the pasta pot and follows it up with a too-generous dollop of olive oil. If he’d seen her do that, he’d castigate her for being wasteful. Again. She dumps in the pasta when the water boils, slams the colander into the sink, and starts to hunt on the cluttered counter for her potholders.

Michael Keaton’s voice blats out “I’m tellin’ ya, honey, she meant nothin’ to me. Nothin’ at all!” Her stomach burns and cramps in reminiscent response. The timer goes off shrilly; she wants to shriek at its assault.   
  
She can find neither potholders nor oven mitts in the tortured mess that her kitchen counter has become. With a seething curse, she turns the stove off and yanks a dishtowel from the drawer to wrap around the spaghetti pot handles.   
  
It only takes a second, literally. One corner of dangling dishtowel touches the still-searingly hot electrical coil on the stove, where olive oil has already been spilled. The dishcloth becomes a flaming rag; flame leaps from dishrag to her scrubs top and climbs her long ponytail in its rapid ascent.   
  
The pasta pot clangs to the floor as the linoleum starts to singe.    
  
He snores on.   
  
“Betelgeuse!” 

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this back in 2006, and scared the hell out of the four horror writers who read it, as well as scaring the hell out of myself. Your mileage may vary.


End file.
